You are here

THE FAILURE OF LAISSEZ FAIRE CAPITALISM

"This is the book to read for those who want to understand the agenda that is bringing the West to its knees."

THE FAILURE OF LAISSEZ FAIRE CAPITALISM and the Economic Dissolution of the West: Towards a New Economics for a Full Worldby PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

available in US/Canada and Overseas

"In his inimitable way, Roberts describes how the rhetorical patter talk about free-markets is a cover story for the horror of an extractive asset-stripping operation by publicly-supported private banks and the governments that they control that impoverishes people and the environment. He shows that unrealistic assumptions made by free-trade ideologues have led to the "New Dispossession" and a political and economic race to the bottom, applauded as a success story by junk economists, who ignore the reductions in living standards and rise in environmental instability."--Michael Hudson

"The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism is fearless. It transcends Roberts’ illustrious career and prior works of intellectual and practical analysis. We are at the crossroads of a crumbling world where both policies and ideologies have failed. Roberts shows the dangers of clinging to the idea that markets are free and to the belief that unrestrained and unregulated capitalism is positive. Jobs offshoring destroyed middle class prospects, and financial deregulation fostered a rapacious banking industry that has removed itself from market discipline and threatens Western economies with collapse. Roberts’ conclusions are sobering, his solutions bold, his book a compelling gift." --Nomi Prins

This book is a major challenge both to economic theory and to media explanations of the ongoing 21st century economic crisis. It outlines how the one percent have pulled off an economic and political revolution. By offshoring manufacturing and professional service jobs, US corporations destroyed the growth of consumer income, the basis of the US economy, leaving the bulk of the population mired in debt. Deregulation was used to concentrate income and wealth in fewer hands and in financial corporations "too big to fail."

Bailouts remove financial corporations from market discipline and force taxpayers in the US and EU to cover banksters' gambling losses. Environmental destruction has accelerated as economists and corporations refuse to count the exhaustion of nature’s resources as a cost, imposing it on the environment and on third parties who do not share in the profits. In much of the Third World the growth model imposes monocultures that deprive people of independence and self-sufficiency The American people do not benefit.

In fact, "Globalism," Roberts writes,"is a conspiracy against First World jobs." In addition to offshoring, business leaders are replacing Americans with foreigners in those jobs that they find convenient to retain in the US. Fraudulently claiming that they cannot find enough Americans with science and engineering degrees to fill the jobs, they successfully lobby Congress for work visas for foreigners, who replace American scientific, engineering, and technical employees at substantially lower costs in order to concentrate income and wealth at the top. No one seems to understand that research, development, design, and innovation take place in countries where things are made.

The loss of manufacturing means ultimately the loss of engineering and science. The newest plants embody the latest technology. If these plants are abroad, that is where the cutting edge resides.

According to a new United Nations Development Program report, the US ranks third among states with the worst income inequality, after Hong Kong and Singapore. Clearly in the US the ladders of upward mobility have been taken down. The US is no longer an opportunity society.